


paperweights

by indecentexposed



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Romance, Severe Fluff Advisory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:52:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indecentexposed/pseuds/indecentexposed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark has always been good with structures and binary logic, operating according to a defined set of conditions. He knows, better than anyone, the extraordinary havoc that a single flawed assumption can wreak on an entire system.</p><p>It took him so long to step back far enough, to realize that the problem was less with his actions in and of themselves than with his understanding of the very architecture of <i>Mark and Eduardo</i>—of who and what they were, then.</p><p>(Coda to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/538626">pieces from my heart</a>. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	paperweights

**Author's Note:**

> Entirely & always for [Venla](http://peculiarnuisance.tumblr.com), who makes writing worthwhile all by herself.

They’re taking it slow.

It starts the second night in Singapore, when Mark pushes Eduardo up against the kitchen counter and kisses him breathless, and there’s heat and need and urgency and it is so, so good, right up until the moment when Mark starts to work open the top button on Eduardo’s shirt. Eduardo doesn’t pull away or try to stop him, but he does tense a little bit, bites his lip and says _Mark_ in this tone that’s half a question and half a plea.

Mark remembers (again) the thing Chris said about not asking and the other thing about needs, looks at Eduardo and figures out all on his own that right this second, what Eduardo needs is not to be pushed. That he needs, _they_ need, some time and breathing space before they are ready for this, because things have admittedly moved pretty fast and maybe Eduardo doesn’t quite trust Mark or this thing between them completely. Not yet, not all the way.

Mark doesn’t let go, but he loosens his grasp on Eduardo and pulls back, holds both of them still, and they breathe into the space between them until their pulses slow.

“Wardo,” Mark says, “it’s okay. We don’t—we’ll go slow. Okay?”

“Okay.”

So, they are taking it slow.

Mark has been sleeping on the couch for three nights, which is fine in the sense that Eduardo’s couch is big and very comfortable—it’s nice, even, in the sense that Mark can stay up late into the night, coding and watching TV long after Eduardo’s fallen asleep. The only thing is that when Mark finally does settle down to sleep on the couch that smells like Eduardo, he really can’t helping _thinking_ about Eduardo, sleeping a ridiculously short distance away, probably not wearing very many clothes, and those are the sorts of thoughts that lead in a very specific direction.

Mark can’t quite bring himself to jerk off on Eduardo’s couch, though, so it’s been a long three days.

They kiss a lot, which is great.

They cuddle a lot, too, which is new.

Mark has actively avoided cuddling up to this point in his life, and he’s been almost entirely successful—with the exception of the night Dustin discovered Irish car bombs and subsequently had to be carried back to Kirkland, where he threw up an impressive number of times in succession, then promptly crawled into Mark’s lap and refused to get out of it.

Mark finds he doesn’t really mind so much, though, with Eduardo.

On Mark’s last night in Singapore, they lie together in Eduardo’s ridiculously large bed and watch Stargate re-runs and eat pizza and talk. They talk about Harvard, so many years ago now—nearly a decade, which is crazy. “Remember Caribbean night?” Eduardo says, grinning, and Mark won’t let him hear the end of it until Eduardo drags himself out of bed with a groan and recreates his absurd dancing walk, though they both agree it suffers from the absence of the sombrero.

Eduardo talks about Singapore, and Mark listens intently, soaks up every word, every tiny piece of information, beginning to fill in five years of blanks. He talks about California when Eduardo asks, a little hesitantly at first because _Palo Alto_ used to be synonymous with everything that went wrong between them, but Eduardo prompts him with questions and pretty quickly Mark relaxes. He tells Eduardo about the things he loves (the manic hum of perpetual creation, the collaborative energy, permanent flip-flop weather) and the things he hates (rush hour on the 101, the fact that fucking _everybody else_ has a tan, Google). He tells story after story, filling in the blanks of his own.

They don’t talk about the things in between Harvard and California and Singapore, but it’s not because they _can’t_ and Mark decides that’s okay. After a while they stop talking entirely and kiss, languid and slow and so long that Mark loses all track of time until Eduardo pulls away to yawn, blinking delicately.

“Your eyelashes are stupid,” Mark tells him, because they really are, they’re sort of ridiculously long and soft-looking and Mark is now apparently the sort of person who notices things like the way Eduardo’s lashes settle against his cheeks when he closes his eyes.

“Your face is stupid,” Eduardo mutters, nestling into the pillow and pretty much negating the words by pulling Mark down for another kiss.

“Tired?” Mark says against his lips, and Eduardo nods, eyes fluttering closed again. Mark figures this is his cue, but just as he’s reluctantly starting to sit up, preparing to head for the couch, Eduardo catches him gently by the arm.

“Don’t,” he mumbles, tugging at Mark, trying to bring him back down to the pillows. “Sleep here.”

 _Slow,_ Mark thinks, and hesitates. “Wardo, I don’t know if—”

“Please,” Eduardo tries entreatingly, opening his dark eyes wide and sort of ruining it with another yawn, but he looks so goddamned adorable, all sleepy and sprawled-out and languid-looking and his stupid hair is _everywhere_ and Mark really doesn’t think any reasonable person could possibly expect him to leave this bed, like, ever.

Falling asleep next to Eduardo is simultaneously the best and the worst thing that has ever happened to him, Mark decides a few minutes later. It’s the best thing because—well, mostly just because Eduardo is _there,_ but also because Eduardo’s skin is warm and golden and soft and all over the place, and so much of it is within reach when he curls his body around Mark in sleep, head resting lightly in the crook of Mark’s shoulder, settled against the curves and planes of Mark’s chest like he belongs there.

It’s the worst thing for pretty much the same reasons.

Possibly worse than the couch.

It is so worth it, though.

*

Three weeks later, Eduardo comes to Palo Alto for a long weekend.

His flight gets in at 5:30 on Thursday, and Eduardo e-mails Mark a few days days beforehand to confirm their plans. In the e-mail, he mentions that he’s arranged for car service from San Francisco International, and though Eduardo doesn’t explicitly say so, Mark knows this is because he doesn’t usually leave the Facebook offices until 6:00 or later (usually later). He sends a quick e-mail back, saying he’ll make sure to be at the house by the time Eduardo gets there.

Then he calls Eduardo’s assistant, instructs her to cancel the car service, and rearranges his Thursday afternoon meetings.

He’s learning to pay attention to the things Eduardo doesn’t say.

Mark hates airports. They’re chaotic and loud and much, much too busy, horribly inefficient, crammed full of people who are stressed out, jet-lagged, emotional, in a hurry. Mark already spends much more time in airports than he would like, but he gets there an hour early on Thursday, just to be sure. It’s raining, which Mark thinks he might find poetic or apropos or some shit, if it weren’t so irritating.

He gets completely soaked running in from the parking lot. Mark suspects this is the universe’s idea of a joke.

The look on Eduardo’s face, though, when he sees Mark waiting for him at the arrivals gate?

Suffice it to say that Mark thinks he could spend the rest of his life picking Eduardo up from airports.

They both get soaked running back to the car, and Eduardo’s suit is probably ruined, which Mark insists is his own fault because “who wears a suit on an eighteen-hour flight, Wardo, _honestly.”_ Eduardo just laughs and tugs off his jacket, rain clinging to his eyelashes and streaking his skin in a way that’s sort of absurdly appealing, and they end up making out right there in the front seat of the car, like teenagers.

Then they go back to Mark’s house, where they order in an obscene amount of Chinese food and watch some unbelievably stupid reality show, which is fine because they don’t actually really watch much of it, at all. They talk and talk and talk, tripping over each other’s stories like they haven’t spent the past three weeks ringing up a truly unspeakable international phone bill, and then they make out some more and there is no talk of anybody sleeping on the couch.

Mark is so happy it kind of scares him, a little bit.

On Saturday night, Chris and Dustin come over to hang out and play video games. They eat pizza and drink beer and play, like, six hours of Mario Kart, and it feels sort of like a time warp but it also feels really good and really right, like maybe they all went the long way around but they’ve finally ended up back where they belong, in various permutations of _together._

Chris and Dustin go out to get more beer at one point, and once they’re gone Eduardo crawls into Mark’s lap, straddles him and kisses him, open-mouthed and lazy and deep, until they’re both hard in their jeans.

Slow is fine.

It’s good, even. It’s actually kind of nice.

Right this second, though?

Right this second, Mark wants to pull Eduardo’s clothes off, drag him up to the bedroom, and find out how Eduardo’s muscles move under his skin, what he looks like when he’s spread open, the sounds he makes when he comes.

“Mark,” Eduardo half laughs, half gasps into his shoulder. “Mark, Chris and Dustin are going to be back any second.”

Mark ignores this, nipping at Eduardo’s throat instead, grinding up against his thigh, and Eduardo makes a strangled noise and shoves his hips down into Mark’s, hard. There’s just enough friction that it’s maddening, and Mark’s hands slide eagerly up under Eduardo’s shirt, fingers digging into bare skin because all of a sudden there is absolutely not enough of that involved in this equation. Eduardo just _gives_ under the touch, circling his hips and collapsing against Mark’s mouth with a low groan when Mark’s fingers graze a nipple, and he buries his hands in Mark’s hair and presses against him like there’s no possible way they could ever get close enough.

They’re so far gone that neither of them hears the front door open, and Mark is just about to finish pulling Eduardo’s shirt over his head when he focuses in on Chris, who’s stopped abruptly in the doorway with Dustin right behind him. Chris, at least, has the decency to look equal parts amused and embarrassed; Dustin is just smirking.

“Hey, guys,” Dustin says, grinning, and Mark is pretty sure he’s never wanted to kill anybody quite so badly in his life. Eduardo jerks around in surprise, turns bright red and slides off Mark’s lap, tugging his shirt down and hiding his face in Mark’s shoulder with a muffled, “Oh, _god.”_

“Dustin,” Chris says lightly, starting to back up, “I’m feeling kind of tired all of a sudden.”

“What he’s trying to say is, we’ll just be going now,” Dustin informs Mark and Eduardo cheerfully, over Chris’s shoulder. “You kids have fun, and don’t do anything we wouldn’t do. Which honestly isn’t much at this point, Chris is actually surprisingly kinky under all that Prada, so—”

“Please stop talking,” Eduardo interrupts, a little weakly.

“Or you’re actually fired this time,” Mark adds, glaring.

“Let’s go home,” Chris says to Dustin, steering him back through the door, and Mark is pretty sure he hears Chris murmur something about _finding something better to do with your mouth,_ but then the door clicks shut and Eduardo’s back on top of him and Mark is abruptly way too distracted to think about firing anybody.

He takes Eduardo upstairs to the bedroom, and it’s gentler than before, less urgent, though they do actually manage to get their clothes off. There’s some awkward laughter and fumbling with buttons, but mostly there is a lot of wide-eyed looking and a lot of touching, and Mark is pretty sure his voice has never sounded quite like it does when he says the word _beautiful_ out loud, for the first time.

Eventually, they make it to the bed, where they lie side by side and kiss and touch some more and finally, finally stroke each other off long and slow, unhurried, like they have all the time in the world.

Mark hopes they do.

*

Two weeks after that (they appear to be getting arguably worse at the long-distance thing), Mark is on his way back to Singapore.

He hardly gets any sleep in the two days preceding his trip, trying to fit in as much work as possible. The plan is to get some rest during the flight, but there’s intermittent turbulence most of the way to Hong Kong, and Mark doesn’t manage to sleep much. Then his connecting flight gets delayed, so he spends four hours trying to keep his eyes open in the middle of the Hong Kong airport. By the time his plane actually does touch down in Singapore in the middle of the afternoon, Mark’s body is convinced it’s the middle of the night, and he can barely walk in a straight line.

Eduardo greets him with a huge hug, warm and solid in all the right places, and it is possible that Mark, in his exhaustion, closes his eyes and lets himself lean into it, if only for a couple of seconds.

“Come on, babe,” Eduardo says in his ear, and Mark summons up the energy to pull back with a half-hearted glare, which just makes Eduardo laugh, adding insult to injury. “Let’s go. The car’s waiting.”

The next hour passes in a blur of traffic and glass and drifting in and out of sleep on Eduardo’s shoulder. Mark is just this side of conscious when they reach the lobby of Eduardo’s building, barely cognizant for the long elevator ride, and half-asleep already by the time Eduardo pulls him through the bedroom door. It dimly occurs to Mark to protest, because he did not come halfway around the world just to go straight to bed (in the literal sense, anyway), but Eduardo is pulling the covers up over him and kissing him so softly and murmuring something in Portuguese, sing-song and lilting, and Mark is asleep almost as soon as he closes his eyes.

He wakes in the dark, disoriented and startled for half a second—but there’s the low hum of the city outside the window, and a familiar scent in the sheets and pillows, and Mark relaxes and lets out his breath, remembering. His phone is sitting on the nightstand, and he picks it up to see that it’s a little after midnight. Eduardo’s side of the bed is untouched, meaning he must still be awake, though the apartment is quiet.

Mark climbs out of bed and glances down to see that he’s still got on the same clothes he’s been wearing for nearly two days. His teeth are gritty and his skin feels sticky and too warm despite the crisp coolness of the room, and these are not ordinarily the sorts of things about which Mark gives a fuck, but then again he wasn’t exactly in the habit of getting naked with stupidly attractive people _(person,_ whatever) until very recently.

Fortunately, the master bath is attached to the bedroom, and fifteen minutes later Mark steps out of the shower and into a change of clothes, then pads down the hall into the warm light of the living room, where Eduardo is sprawled on the couch reading _The Economist._ He’s wearing jeans and a faded Harvard t-shirt, which clings very appealingly in places it definitely did not back when they were actually at Harvard.

Eduardo, as far as Mark can tell, has spent most of the past five years at the gym.

“Hey,” Mark says, and Eduardo looks up, his face breaking immediately into a smile.

“Hi,” he says, getting to his feet and coming forward to twine his arms around Mark’s waist. “Did you sleep okay?”

Mark makes a small noise in the affirmative, hooking his fingers through the empty belt loops of Eduardo’s jeans to pull him in for a kiss. The jeans sit low on Eduardo’s hips, and the t-shirt has shrunk from too many washings, leaving a strip of bare skin along which Mark traces a finger, making Eduardo shiver and exhale sharp and quick against his lips. Mark kisses him again, and thinks in the next moment that he’s never welcomed anything so much as the hesitant slip of Eduardo’s hands up under his t-shirt, tentative warmth against still-damp skin.

He looses an appreciative hum into Eduardo’s mouth, nips gently at his bottom lip and presses their hips together, which earns him a slight arch of Eduardo’s back and a murmured _“Mark,”_ low and needy. It’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying, Mark thinks, like exploring continually shifting terrain without a map. He has ideas, guesses, a general sense of direction—but for the most part, it’s trial and error, so he’s closely attentive to Eduardo’s reactions.

Fortunately, Eduardo gives him plenty of material: shivering and twisting and angling, pushing back eagerly whenever Mark touches him the right way, in the right place. Mark is a quick study, and he’s pretty sure he could get Eduardo off through his jeans right here in the living room with a little bit of concentrated effort— if he wanted to, which he doesn’t. Not right now, anyway.

Mark has—well, not _plans,_ exactly. More like half-formed hopes for what might happen between them tonight.

Even so, it takes some effort on his part to pull back, especially when Eduardo actually whimpers in protest at the loss of Mark’s mouth. The sound goes straight down Mark’s spine in a long shiver that lights up every nerve, and he reaches for Eduardo’s hand, tugging impatiently. “Come on,” he urges, and Eduardo acquiesces, but not before he pulls Mark back in for one more kiss, so heated and deep it makes Mark’s skin sing with anticipation.

In the bedroom, Mark pushes Eduardo up against a wall and pins him with his hips. It’s more aggressive than he’s been up to now—he hasn’t wanted to push this tenuous new thing too far, but Eduardo melts right into it, letting his head fall back with a low groan when Mark grinds against him. Mark drops his head to bite at the base of Eduardo’s throat, eliciting a gasp that bites off into a sigh, and then Eduardo is cupping his face and tugging him gently upward, whispering, “Kiss me.”

Mark frankly cannot imagine a universe in which he is ever going to say no to _that,_ although he does take the time yank Eduardo’s shirt over his head first.

They are both more or less undressed by the time they actually make it to the bed, and much like the first night everything slows down a beat, but it feels different and although Mark is reasonably certain that he and Eduardo are on the same page, he needs to be sure.

He’s not sure how to ask, is the thing.

They’re still kissing, face to face with Eduardo settled against the curve of Mark’s arm. He’s tracing featherlight half-circles across Mark’s bare chest with just the tips of his fingers, and Mark thinks inexplicably about differentiation, about derivatives and the topography of responsive change.

It takes some effort and he is arguably less concise than he has ever been in his life, but Mark does eventually manage to express what he wants with some clarity. Possibly too much clarity, because Eduardo’s cheeks abruptly turn pink, which is slightly ridiculous because they are grown-ups, they should be able to have a straightforward conversation about sex—but as it stands, it takes Mark a good ten minutes to work up the nerve to say _I want to fuck you,_ which has the unexpectedly charming effect of causing Eduardo to blush and stammer like a teenager.

“Mark, I haven’t—I mean, I _have,_ you know, some—but I’ve never let anyone—” Eduardo stops mid-sentence, shakes his head, and tries again. “I want that, too. With you. I just haven’t, before. Other things, but not that.”

“For what it’s worth,” Mark tells him, trying not to look pleased despite being enormously relieved they’re in the same boat, “I haven’t either.”

“No?” Eduardo tangles his fingers in Mark’s hair, which is still damp from the shower. Mark hums approvingly, rolling his head back into the touch. “Then I guess we’ll have to figure it out as we go.”

“I know what to do,” Mark mumbles, closing his eyes and enjoying the gentle press of Eduardo’s fingers against his scalp. “I researched.”

They’re lying close enough that he can feel Eduardo’s chest rumble when he laughs. “Do I want to know?”

“Probably not.” Mark grimaces at the memory; he thinks certain terms should probably just be blocked from Google image search for the good of humanity. He is never talking to Dustin again.

That said, he does know what to do. Theoretically, anyway—but here there’s sweat and skin and an electric hum between them that makes all theories of textbook sex seem hopelessly inadequate, and so Mark takes his time running his hands over Eduardo’s body. It’s twofold: he’s learning as he goes, mentally mapping response and reaction, but it also gives him time to think ahead.

“Tell me what you want,” Mark says eventually, low in Eduardo’s ear, not least because he’s quickly learned that it makes Eduardo a little crazy when he says things like this.

It works: Eduardo shudders a little at the words, then gives Mark this wide-eyed look like he’s not entirely sure any of this is real and says, a little breathlessly, “Would you—with your fingers—?”

“Anything you want,” Mark tells him, meaning it in this moment but also in the larger sense, and he looks down at Eduardo and thinks, _anything you need._

Eduardo kisses him like maybe he heard that part, too.

It isn’t perfect. Mark forgets that lube right out of the bottle is _cold,_ particularly in sensitive places, and Eduardo yelps and it’s so comical and not even slightly sexy that they end up laughing, which helps. They’re both still nervous, though, and it takes Mark a long time to get up the nerve to do anything more than touch—and Eduardo a little longer still, to relax enough to let him. Then it’s getting the angle right, which is surprisingly tricky and causes Mark to feel like he’s playing an X-rated game of Hot  & Cold (“There—no, not—too much— _yes,_ like that”)—but is so worth it, when they finally figure it out and Mark can circle his fingertips to make Eduardo’s body tense upward in a graceful, trembling arc.

He is careful—very, very careful, so much so that finally Eduardo cracks an eye open, clearly biting back a smile, and tells Mark that he doesn’t need to be quite so gentle.

“I just—” Maddeningly, Mark can feel the color beginning to flood his cheeks. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

 _Ever again,_ he adds inwardly.

Eduardo smiles up at him reassuringly, traces a single finger down Mark’s chest. “I’m not going to break.”

“I’m not particularly interested in taking chances on that one,” Mark retorts, but Eduardo gives him a look and then abruptly _grinds_ down, and Mark is so startled that by the time he’s recovered enough to pull back, Eduardo’s head has fallen back and the sounds he is making as he works himself open on Mark’s fingers are so gorgeous that Mark forgets all about being careful and just melts into the thrust and give of it, entirely overwhelmed by the desire to give Eduardo anything and everything he wants.

Then without warning Eduardo’s twisting gently away from the touch, catching him by the wrist, and Mark looks up, panicked. “What’s wrong? Does it hurt?”

“No, god, no, it feels amazing. Just,” and Eduardo’s face is so earnest and open that Mark absolutely can’t handle it, it’s like falling apart and being put back together only to go to pieces over and over again, “I don’t want to come like this, I want you to—”

Mark knows, and agrees, and presses a featherweight kiss to the inside of Eduardo’s thigh by way of acquiescence before carefully easing his fingers out. Eduardo collapses on the bed like a puppet whose strings have been dropped, though he visibly tenses again when Mark reaches down and strokes his cock, just a couple of times, partly because he can and partly because the look on Eduardo’s face when Mark does this should be illegal.

“You sure?” Mark hears himself ask, which is probably ridiculous given the way Eduardo is spread out over the bed and actually _trembling_ with what Mark is pretty sure is anticipation, but there’s always the chance it might not be and Mark has worked too hard to put everything between them back together, to wreck it now by asking for more than Eduardo is ready to give. He can wait a few more weeks—months, even. However long it takes.

(It wasn’t so long ago, after all, when he’d thought he might have to wait forever.)

But Eduardo is nodding _yes,_ and then it gets a little awkward and fumbling again, for a while, and Mark’s hands are shaking. And then—

_Then._

The first push is electric and intense, a sudden bloom of sensation and pleasure. It’s Mark’s fingertips pressed into Eduardo’s damp skin with a tenderness that doesn’t so much nullify everything that came before as cast it into changing light. It’s an easy stretch and the sense of everything between them falling into place as Mark settles over Eduardo, pressing his lips to the salt-slick skin of Eduardo’s throat while he rolls his hips, slow.

He wants to look down, to watch it happening, but there are definite limits to how much Mark can handle, so he just keeps watching Eduardo’s face for the slightest hint of pain or uncertainty while mentally implementing Shor’s algorithm in every programming language he knows, which is just distraction enough to keep him present.

Eduardo’s fingers tighten ever so slightly in his own, and Mark immediately stills—even though he wants, with almost overwhelming intensity, to do the opposite. “Wardo?”

Eduardo’s eyes flicker open, and he shakes his head slightly. “I’m okay. Just—you feel—”

“I know,” Mark tells him, because he’s right there, too, in the tenuous space between too much and not enough. “You too.”

He rocks his hips gently, coaxing an exquisite moan from Eduardo’s lips, and it’s good—and then, a little while later, it’s better. There’s a point, with Eduardo’s chest pressed flush against his own, legs tangled together and hands everywhere, that Mark thinks they’re as close as it’s possible for two people to get.

It’s still not close enough, and he kisses Eduardo hard enough to bruise, twists his hips, holds on tighter still.

*

Mark wakes up early enough to catch the sunrise and, for the first morning in a very long time, he doesn’t get up right away. Instead, he turns on his side and lies quietly studying Eduardo, while the sky turns from bluish grey to watercolor pink and gold.

He watches Eduardo’s chest rise and fall and thinks about recursive algorithms and a thousand mornings of _this._ He thinks about semantic errors and crossed wires, missed signals. He thinks about locations in memory and the way in which constants, ironically enough, are designed for redefinition.

He’s always been good with structures and binary logic, operating according to a defined set of conditions. The thing is, Mark has spent enough hours line-testing syntactically correct code to recognize the importance of semantics; he knows, better than anyone, the extraordinary havoc that a single flawed assumption can wreak on an entire system.

It took him so long to step back far enough, to realize that the problem was less with his actions in and of themselves than with his understanding of the very architecture of _Mark and Eduardo_ —of who and what they were, then.

When Eduardo’s eyes open, Mark is thinking about loops and how they can stretch into infinity without incrementation or limits; how they need both growth and defined boundaries to avoid endless repetition, to move forward.

“Morning,” says Eduardo, and his voice is scratchy with sleep and his hair is going in ten different directions—but when he smiles up at Mark there’s a new softness in his eyes, something that’s moved beyond _hope_ and into _trust._ It’s deep and warm and true and slightly terrifying and very definitely the best thing that has ever happened to Mark, who decides right then that the most important thing in the world is to make very, very sure that Eduardo never stops looking at him like that.

“What were you thinking about?” Eduardo asks, and Mark searches for words but they all belong to the language of machines, relational truths strewn through a spindly syntax he can’t begin to translate. He shrugs, traces a fingertip down Eduardo’s cheek, tries valiantly to ignore the tightening in his chest when Eduardo turns his head and brushes his lips to the inside of Mark’s wrist.

“Wardo,” he says, and they both pretend not to hear the very slight break in his voice, “I—”

“Shut up,” Eduardo murmurs, cupping a hand to the back of Mark’s neck and tugging him down. “I know.”

It’s different, in the early morning light: less tentative, more intimate. They kiss longer and slow, molding to the give and take of one another, and when Mark finally opens Eduardo up it’s with a languid ease, though he’s every bit as gentle and at first his hands still shake, a little.

He listens to Eduardo sigh as he twists and dips his fingers, already beginning to be sure of himself, and watches the way the beads of sweat melt into glossy streaks across the bronze skin. He keeps his other hand pressed into the curve of Eduardo’s back, feeling the tension build and recede, soothing with an easy circle of his fingertips now and again. It’s entirely quiet except for the soft, needing noises that keep escaping Eduardo’s lips, growing in urgency until—

“Mark,” Eduardo says, strained, “I need—please—”

His thighs fall open when Mark settles between them, and Mark brackets Eduardo’s hips with his hands and goes so slowly, pushing forward only to pull back—teasing now, instead of cautious. Eduardo makes a little noise of protest, but he doesn’t fight Mark’s hold; he lets Mark set the tempo, settling into a slow and even rhythm of push and pull. He’s quiet except for the occasional gasp or bitten-off moan when Mark presses into him just so, but his fingers digging hard into Mark’s back suggest that Mark is doing something very right.

Possibly a lot of things.

“I used to imagine this all the time,” Eduardo says afterward, curled into Mark’s shoulder. “Back at Harvard, especially. You’d pass out on the couch after staying up for three days straight, and I’d sit there watching you sleep and wondering what it would be like if we had—well, this.”

 _Semantic errors,_ thinks Mark, studiously ignoring the lump in his throat. “Is it like you imagined?”

“The sex?” Eduardo’s tone is teasing, and Mark cannot get enough of this playfulness, this easy warmth. “Better, actually.”

“To be fair, I don’t think anybody had sex this good in college.”

Eduardo laughs, then looks like he’s considering it. “Chris probably did.”

“Probably,” agrees Mark, because the world tends to conform to Chris’s wishes like that.

He presses a kiss to Eduardo’s temple, and there’s no forethought to it—it’s easy and seems right, a more succint expression of affection than Mark could have managed with words, which are still not the easiest thing for him. Eduardo’s eyes go strangely bright, and for a second he looks like he might be about to say something, but then he just shakes his head a little wonderingly and settles more comfortably against Mark, and after a while his breathing goes slow and even.

Mark thinks he could stand to sleep a little longer; he is, in fact, beginning to drift off again when Eduardo murmurs something, muffled against Mark’s skin.

“Hm?” They’re tangled together, close enough that when Mark turns his head to look at Eduardo, there’s only the smallest space between them.

“I said, I was in love with you. Then, I mean.”

“I know.” Mark does not miss the past tense, is uncertain of its significance. “I mean, not—I didn’t know, then. But I do now.”

It doesn’t feel like much of a response given the weight of this particular conversation, but Eduardo smiles into Mark’s eyes with reassuring warmth, and just like that, it occurs to Mark that he is not the only one listening for meaning. He’s only been doing this thing with Eduardo for a short while, this thing where he really tries to _hear,_ to sift through the needs and feelings that don’t always come through in the words—but Eduardo, Mark abruptly realizes, has been doing it all along.

“Now is what matters,” Eduardo says.

Mark hears, _I forgive you._

He still doesn’t understand much about love. Mark’s world is ordered by logic and he knows its language by heart, but love is antithetical to structure, to machinery, to numbers. There’s no right algorithm; love doesn’t compute, doesn’t scale. Mark has been waiting to say the words, waiting for the insight that would shed some light on their meaning, but it hasn’t come and in this moment, he no longer needs it. He doesn’t fully understand, and he thinks he might not ever, but he _knows._

He loves Eduardo, and it’s enough.

The words come and Mark means them, present tense, and when Eduardo says them back to him the space between them narrows from ten years and eight thousand miles to a heartbeat, and it’s the beginning of everything.

*


End file.
